The coordination and delivery of weapons to defend Ukraine's democracy and sovereignty are increasing. It's time to drive the Russian war criminals out of Ukraine including all of Crimea. Top U.S. and Ukraine military chiefs meet in person for the first time https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-01-17/top-us-ukraine-military-chiefs-meet-in-person A MILITARY BASE IN SOUTHEASTERN POLAND — The United States’ top military officer, Army Gen. Mark Milley, traveled to a site near the Ukraine-Poland border Tuesday and talked with his Ukrainian counterpart face to face for the first time — a meeting that underscores the growing ties between the two militaries and comes at a critical time in Russia’s nearly 11-month-old war against Ukraine. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met for a couple of hours with Ukraine’s chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, at an undisclosed location in southeastern Poland. The two leaders have talked frequently about Ukraine’s military needs and the state of the war over the last year but had never met face to face. The meeting comes as the international community ramps up military assistance to Ukraine, including expanded training of Ukrainian troops by the U.S. and the provision of a Patriot missile battery, tanks and increased air-defense and other weapons systems by the U.S. and a coalition of European and other nations. It also marks a key time in the war. Ukraine’s troops face fierce fighting in eastern Donetsk province, where Russian forces — supplemented by thousands of private Wagner Group contractors — seek to turn the tide after a series of battlefield setbacks in recent months. Army Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Milley, told two reporters traveling with the chairman that the two generals felt it was important to meet in person. The reporters did not accompany Milley to the meeting and, under conditions set by the military, agreed not to identify the military base in southeastern Poland where they were. “These guys have been talking on a very regular basis for about a year now, and they’ve gotten to know each other,” Butler said. “They’ve talked in detail about the defense that Ukraine is trying to do against Russia’s aggression. And it’s important — when you have two military professionals looking each other in the eye and talking about very, very important topics, there’s a difference.” Butler said there had been some hope that Zaluzhnyi would travel to Brussels for a meeting of NATO and other defense chiefs this week, but when it became clear Monday that that would not happen, Milley and Zaluzhnyi quickly decided to meet in Poland, near the border. While a number of U.S. civilian leaders have gone to Ukraine, the Biden administration has made it clear that no uniformed military service members will enter Ukraine other than those connected to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. Butler said only a small group — Milley and six of his senior staffers — traveled by car to the meeting. He said the meeting would allow Milley to relay Zaluzhnyi’s concerns and information to the other military leaders at the NATO chiefs’ meeting. Milley, he said, would be able to “describe the tactical and operational conditions on the battlefield and what the military needs are for that, and the way he does that is, one, by understanding it himself, but by also talking to Zaluzhnyi on a regular basis.” Milley also will be able to describe the new training of Ukrainian forces that the U.S. is doing at the Grafenwoehr training area in Germany. The chairman, who got his first look at the new, so-called combined arms instruction during a nearly two-hour visit there Monday, has said it would better prepare Ukrainian troops to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks. More than 600 Ukrainian troops began the expanded training program at the camp just a day before Milley arrived. Milley and Zaluzhnyi’s meeting kicks off a series of high-level gatherings of military and defense leaders this week. Besides the NATO summit, the so-called Ukraine Contact Group will gather at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday and Friday. That group consists of about 50 top defense officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, who coordinate military contributions to Ukraine. The meetings are expected to focus on Ukraine’s ongoing and future military needs as the hard-packed terrain of the winter months turns into muddy roads and fields in the spring. After several months of losing territory it had captured, Russia in recent days claimed that it took control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting, but if Moscow’s troops take control of Soledar, it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months. And in a barrage of airstrikes over the weekend, Russia struck Kyiv, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, where the death toll from a strike on one apartment building rose to 44. Western analysts point to signs that the Kremlin is digging in for a drawn-out war, and say the Russian military command is preparing for an expanded mobilization effort.
Russia dumphuk on State TV asks some important questions. Such as why are things going so poorly for Russia? Russian TV Pundit Questions How All Aims of Ukraine Invasion Have Failed https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-kremlin-tv-yusin-aims-opposite-failed-1774201
ok,ok again mostly nazis sources with zero credibility but what I'm interested do you consider forced detention of 15 million ukrainian men whose only options is to be sent to estern ukraine to die within days or weeks? Is it largest crime against humanity in modern history which ukrainian government commits against own people? 15 million men waiting to die to defend democracy and their guilt is just that they were born in this nazi country military just catch them like wild animals on streets and send them to die to eastern ukraine maybe you want to discouss real war crimes committed by ukrainian nazis?
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-...ia-Afford-To-Continue-Its-War-In-Ukraine.html How Long Can Russia Afford To Continue Its War In Ukraine? By The Jamestown Foundation - Jan 17, 2023, 3:00 PM CST The estimated immediate costs of Russia’s war against Ukraine during 2022–2023 grew from 5 trillion rubles to 10 trillion rubles. The Kremlin faces a lack of time and long-term economic sustainability. The Russian government’s total revenue for 2022 was 27.77 trillion rubles and total spending was 31.11 trillion rubles. Join Our Community The final deficit of the Russian federal budget for 2022 appeared to be 3.35 trillion rubles, almost $48.8 billion according to the average exchange rate during the year. Although, the ruble became a partially convertible currency after the beginning of Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, and therefore, the exchange rates must be treated carefully. The Russian government’s total revenue for 2022 was 27.77 trillion rubles (about $409.68 billion) and total spending was 31.11 trillion rubles (just under $459 billion) (RBC, January 10, 2023). However, the original government budget had accounted for 25 trillion rubles ($368.81 billion) in revenue and only 23.78 trillion rubles ($350.81 billion) in spending (Minfin.gov.ru, December 2021). Thus, the additional and unplanned spending of 2022 came out to be 7.33 trillion rubles, or $107 billion, and an undefined share of this amount, presumably somewhere between 3 trillion and 4 trillion rubles ($44 billion to $59 billion), belongs to the national defense, national security and law enforcement budgets. Meanwhile, the additional 2.77 trillion rubles ($40.86 billion) of revenue came from increased taxes on Gazprom and the Russian National Wealth Fund, which de facto means an emission of rubles (Kommersant, September 28, 2022; Minfin.gov.ru, November 8, 2022; TASS, December 27, 2022). Russian government budget planning for 2023 presumes 26.13 trillion rubles ($385.48 billion) in revenue and 29.06 trillion rubles ($428.71 billion) for spending (Budget.gov.ru, December 5, 2022). The share of national defense spending is planned to exceed 5 trillion rubles (almost $74 billion), and the share of the budget dedicated to national security and law enforcement is planned to exceed 4.4 trillion rubles ($64.9 billion). These figures were updated from the original estimates of 3.47 trillion rubles ($51.19 billion) and 2.97 trillion rubles ($43.82 billion), respectively (Minfin.gov.ru, December 2021; Duma.gov.ru, October 26, 2022; Duma.gov.ru, November 10, 2022). However, the current budget plan is not final and will probably be revised throughout 2023. Therefore, if the estimated immediate costs of Russia’s war against Ukraine during 2022–2023 grew from 5 trillion rubles (almost $74 billion) to 8.3 trillion rubles ($122.4 billion) as of November 2022 (see EDM, November 17, 2022), now it definitely exceeds 10 trillion rubles ($147.5 billion) and promises to further increase. Nevertheless, all these additional trillions of rubles in 2022 did not led to a significant increase in arms manufacturing. For instance, total manufacturing rate in Russia for the period running from January to November 2022 was 99.2 percent when compared to the same period in 2021. Even if the manufacturing of transport vehicles, including all types of aircraft and vessels but excluding automobiles, increased by 16.5 percent in November 2022, as compared to November 2021, and by 18 percent, as compared to October 2022, the total production index for manufacturing of transport vehicles from January to November 2022 was 98 percent of that for January–November 2021 (Rosstat.gov.ru, December 28, 2022; Rosstat.gov.ru, December 28, 2022). Even so, some indexes did demonstrate a significant increase in production and are related to the defense industry: from January to November 2021, the manufacturing of computers, electronics and optical devices was 104 percent and the manufacturing of non-specified machinery and equipment was 102.9 percent of production values for the same period in 2021. Particularly, in 2022, the increase for the manufacturing of radar, navigation hardware and radio equipment was 117.6 percent (in rubles); for the manufacturing of computers and their parts was 148.1 percent (in rubles); and for the manufacturing of semiconductor devices was 113.2 percent when compared to the same period of 2021. However, the manufacturing of electricity in Russia was only 100.8 percent (in billions of kilowatts per hour) of production in 2021, which also confirms the presumption that no significant increase in Russian arms manufacturing transpired in 2022 (Rosstat.gov.ru, December 28, 2022). Moreover, at least one of the leading Russian state-owned defense corporations, Roscosmos, confirmed that it did not fully execute its contracts in 2022 (Vedomosti, December 21, 2022). This reflects the notion that increasing arms manufacturing remains challenging for the Russian authorities. Despite these facts, the Kremlin is trying to solve this problem at any cost. And the main option considered here is, in 2023, using storages of components and materials that are aimed for arms manufacturing in 2024–2025. Traditionally, the Russian defense industry creates such storages before the long-term arms contracts start (Mil.ru, December 21, 2022). Consequently, the Russian defense industry may produce as many arms as possible in 2023, instead of adhering to the previously scheduled work for 2023–2025. The immediate result would be a cost-plus inflation, with the inevitable prospect of further inflation and a decline in production in coming years, which means that the average arms manufactured annually will either stay the same or decline. Nevertheless, the Russian leadership prefers to ignore this prospect. Another serious challenge comes in the form of a severe deficit of personnel in Russia’s defense industry, which is officially estimated at 400,000 workers and engineers (VPK, June 30, 2022). In an aim to alleviate this challenge, the management of all defense factories have the option to make Saturdays working days and to cancel employees’ vacations, as was the case with Kurganmashzavod, the only Russian manufacturer of tracked armored fighting vehicles (Ura.ru, December 20, 2022). The inevitable prospect of decreasing quality of production is also being largely ignored by the Kremlin (see EDM, January 6). Yet, another option is possible here: the decrease in Russian arms exports means that production lines may be partially used to manufacture arms expressly for the Russian Armed Forces. For instance, by the end of November 2022, Russian arms exports stood at $8 billion (TASS, November 25, 2022). Consequently, total arms exports for 2022 were definitely much lower than in 2021, when they totaled $14.6 billion (Kommersant, August 15, 2022). Although, this source of increase is limited somewhat considering that 40 percent of Russian arms exports in 2022 were attributed to aviation and 30 percent to arms for ground forces and the navy (RBC, November 26, 2022). As a result, even if the Russian leadership increases defense spending and does not care about the war’s rising costs, the actual opportunities for Russia to improve arms production are limited. The Kremlin faces a lack of time and long-term economic sustainability. Therefore, it may be sowing the seeds of its own defeat this year, especially if the combat and economic pressure on Moscow continues to ramp up. However, before suffering defeat, the Russian authorities may choose to mobilize all available means to prevent this—a prospect that is growing ever-more bleak in the face of persistent failures to carry out a complete mobilization of the domestic economy (see EDM, October 31, 2022). By the Jamestown Foundation
On the eve of Putin drastically expanding the draft in Russia to add thousands of unwilling Russian victims to his meat grinder -- the vatniks have moved on this week to pushing the talking point of "but look at Ukraine". Of course, the vatniks fail to mention all the Russian men turned back at their borders while trying to escape Russia or basic facts like that people with debt in Russia are not allowed to leave the country. But vatniks never let the facts stand in the way of their fantasy narrative. Even more amusing is our local vatnik calling the link to the International Criminal Court's information listing out all the well-documented Russian war crimes a "nazi source with zero credibility". Laughable.
Oh look... the Russians are basically turning the military training bases into prisons for the drafted soldiers to discipline anyone who shows the least bit of dissent. So despite what the vatniks are telling us, most of the Russian draftees are completely unwilling to be Putin's cannon fodder. Thread Reader - https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1615263680018497541.html
U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/us/politics/ukraine-crimea-military.html WASHINGTON — For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes. Now that line is starting to soften. After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is home to tens of thousands of dug-in Russian troops and numerous Russian military bases. The moderation in position has come about as the Biden administration has come to believe that if the Ukrainian military can show Russia that its control of Crimea can be threatened, that would strengthen Kyiv’s position in any future negotiations. In addition, fears that the Kremlin would retaliate using a tactical nuclear weapon have dimmed, U.S. officials and experts said — though they cautioned that the risk remained. The new thinking on Crimea — annexed illegally by Russia in 2014 — shows how far Biden administration officials have come from the start of the war, when they were wary of even acknowledging publicly that the United States was providing Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for Ukrainian troops. But over the course of the conflict, the United States and its NATO allies have been steadily loosening the handcuffs they put on themselves, moving from providing Javelins and Stingers to advanced missile systems, Patriot air defense systems, armored fighting vehicles and even some Western tanks to give Ukraine the capacity to strike against Russia’s onslaught. Now, the Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula that President Vladimir V. Putin views as an integral part of his quest to restore past Russian glory. American officials are discussing with their Ukrainian counterparts the use of American-supplied weapons, from HIMARS rocket systems to Bradley fighting vehicles, to possibly target Mr. Putin’s hard-fought control over a land bridge that functions as a critical supply route connecting Crimea to Russia via the Russian-occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol. However, President Biden is not yet ready to give Ukraine the long-range missile systems that Kyiv would need to attack Russian installations on the peninsula. Ukrainian officials have long insisted that Crimea is an important target for their attacks, and that continuing military pressure on Russian bases there is a significant part of their strategy. Ukrainian military officials have also discussed with American officials the importance of increasing pressure on Russia’s rear echelon in Crimea, which supports military operations elsewhere in Ukraine. With the Black Sea fleet, a major Russian air base, command posts and logistics hubs supporting Russian operations in southern Ukraine, the peninsula represents a major focus in Kyiv’s battle plans. In deciding to give the Bradleys to Ukraine, the Biden administration moved closer to providing Kyiv with something for which senior Ukrainian officials have been imploring the United States for months: direct American help for Ukraine to go on the offense — including targeting Crimea. The Bradleys are armored personnel carriers mounted with powerful 25-millimeter guns and guided missiles that can take on Russian tanks. Frederick B. Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and former top U.S. Army commander in Europe, said that in the coming months the Bradleys could be used by Ukrainian troops to help sever the land bridge. Being able to rely on military bases in Crimea for staging was the primary reason Russian forces were able to seize land in southern Ukraine last year, a U.S. official said. Making those forces less capable is a key battlefield goal of the Ukrainians. (More at above url including pictures)
This is stupid. Long-range weapons are not just for "attacking Crimea". Long-range weapons are essential to modern warfare. Having longer-range weaponry than your enemy gives you a tremendous advantage in military operations at the front, not just being able to hit targets in the rear. The West's reluctance in providing weapons that Ukraine needs is a misguided and disgusting appeasement of Russians.
At a minimum, threatening Crimea does to Russia what Russia is doing to Ukraine in Kiev, ie. causing Ukraine to keep troops and resources in that area that could otherwise be moved to the Donbas. If Russia wants to protect Crimea, that takes resources that it apparently aldoes not have yet. And mobilization just sends more clowns with flip-flops on who want to go home. On the other hand, if he does not want to protect it, that's fine too. As I said, same choice he gave the Ukrainians in regard to Kiev. Except the Ukrainians have been fortifying the Kieve/Belarus area and training for months. Unlike the first time around, there are miles and miles of minefields and trenches and fortified bridges.
LOL -- maybe they should have gone somewhere else besides home if they did not want to be arrested immediately and charged with "armed desertion in wartime". Russian Troops Flee Ukraine, Order Taxi to Take Them 300 Miles Back Home https://www.newsweek.com/russian-troops-flee-ukraine-war-taxi-1774784